Gettin’ your Hate Week hate on, part one

I’m starting out on a nuts and bolts-y front.  From Shakin’ the Southland comes this essential, yet succinct, guide to slowing/shutting down the triple option:

1. Stop the Dive. It’s meant to get 3.0 ypc, once they get more than that, you’re dead. They don’t have as great a FB as Dwyer, but if you let them beat you inside it sets up the entire perimeter game and Midline.

2. Hammer that QB every time he touches the football.

3. Knock the QB’s facemask off every time he touches the football. Make him eat dirt.

4. Flatten the QB on every snap.

5. Rip the QB’s head off on every snap.

I don’t give a shit if you get a late hit or unsportsmanlike penalty, you make that QB regret he stepped on the field.

The QB makes it all work. If he drops back to pass, hit him. If he keeps, hit him. If he pitches the ball, hit his ass anyway. Make him hesitate.

You do that, you beat the option.

Stop the dive and beat the hell out of the quarterback.  Timeless advice.

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UPDATE:  Don’t take my word for it.

The triple option starts with the dive, an area Swann said he and his teammates had to quickly adjust to as Saturday’s game went on.

“If you’re going to let them run the ball up the middle you might as well not even have a defense out there,” Swann said. “You’ve got to stop that dive back first and that’s the main thing. If you don’t stop him, now you’re all over the place…it’s a lot of things you have to take away at the beginning to where you can kind of dictate what’s going to go on.”

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“All we’re looking for is the chance to compete against them.”

Marshall’s athletic director gets all passive-aggressive on the selection committee.

“I didn’t think it was going to become that way, but then you see these rankings every week with three-loss teams making it,” Hamrick said. “It’s very confusing if you’re a [Group of Five] school. We don’t know how we fit in and that’s why I wish there was at least some transparency. Hey, if we’re No. 50, just tell me we’re 50. I don’t care. But the average fan’s take right now is [the committee is] more worried about ranking the Power Five and then they’ll just deal with us later, which was not what my understanding was of when this was all put together.”

Sounds like old whine in new bottles.  Boise State’s AD and president used to make the same slam against the BCS.

Here’s the problem:

Entering Saturday, Marshall led the country in margin of victory (30.8 points per game) and ranked fifth in points allowed (16.3). The problem is Marshall’s schedule. To be blunt, it’s incredibly weak.

The Thundering Herd ranks 141st in the country in Sagarin’s strength of schedule, trailing even 13 FCS teams. Based on Sagarin’s overall ranking of teams, the best opponent Marshall has faced is No. 85 Rice.

Conference USA isn’t the Conference USA it used to be. Conference realignment changed that. Decent programs such as Central Florida and East Carolina are now in the American. Old Sun Belt teams are now in Conference USA.

Marshall was scheduled to play Louisville this season, but the Cardinal had to push it back to 2016 in order to play Notre Dame as a new ACC member. Marshall scheduled Miami (Ohio) back when Miami had a 10-win season, not the 2-21 Miami of the past two seasons.

“They say strength of schedule hurts us,” Hamrick said. “How do you know from year to year what team’s going to be good, what team’s going to be bad? Virginia Tech, North Carolina — they were projected to do well and they’re having average seasons. How do you know four or five years out?”

That’s life as a mid-major.  If you’re gonna have big goals, you need to suck it up and play some tough schools on the road.  Even four or five years out, it’s not that hard to find a few that would improve strength of schedule.  But that costs money, too.

Hamrick acknowledges Marshall could “possibly” help itself by scheduling two-for-one games to get higher-profile opponents. But he wants home-and-home games for a guaranteed paycheck. Marshall has future home-and-home series scheduled against Pittsburgh, North Carolina State, Purdue and Louisville.

Of course, it doesn’t cost anything to blame the media.

“It’s just unfortunate for Marshall that everything we’ve done and how we’ve bounced back from the 1970 tragedy [that killed most of Marshall’s football team] that all of a sudden we’re now being called a Group of Five,” Hamrick said. “I’m going to blame the media for that — Power Five and Group of Five. That’s like me telling my children two of them are special, two of them aren’t special.”

Bonus points for playing the tragedy card there.  Maybe one day you can use that to guilt trip the big boys into expanding the playoffs to sixteen.

“He ain’t ever coached.”

Sounds like Kirk Herbstreit made a new fan yesterday.

In praise of the crayon

Barring an extremely unlikely confluence of events (something on the order of a combination of Georgia Tech shutting the Dawgs out and Mississippi State scoring 50+ in the Egg Bowl), Georgia is going to finish the 2014 regular season leading the SEC in scoring, both in conference and total.  Not Texas A&M.  Not Mississippi State. Not Auburn.  Not South Carolina.  Georgia.

Given that he’s coached with a truncated season from Todd Gurley, a quarterback who’s gotten little respect and a receiving corps that’s taken most of the year to round into physical shape, I think Mike Bobo is entitled to take a little bow.

My Mumme Poll ballot, Week 13

Please, please, somebody in the media ask Nick Saban this week if he thinks Alabama exhibited sufficient game control against Western Carolina.  Please.

My ballot:

• Alabama
• Baylor
• FSU
• Georgia
• Mississippi State
• Ohio State
• Oregon
• TCU

Also considered:  Kansas State, Michigan State, UCLA

Yes, I’ve finally given in to the dark side and moved Ohio State into my top eight. The last spot was really hard to settle on.  (And, no, it wasn’t Georgia.  Those wins over Arkansas and Missouri look better with every passing week.)

Observations from the 35, November cupcake edition

What really needs to be said about a game like yesterday?  The best way I can sum it up is that Georgia was up 14-0 with more than 11 minutes still on the clock in the first quarter, having gained something like 120 yards, and having a time of possession under a minute.

Now that’s game control.

• The weather was great.  It’s nice finally reaching the time of the year when sitting in the stands where the sun shines is an advantage.
• My sincerest kudos to whoever made the decision to dial down the volume on the PA system.  Much obliged… and don’t change it back, please.
• Much younger crowd than usual, as you could probably guess.  Cotton candy sales seemed to be booming.  And they sold out of fried Oreos.
• Mason looked good on the deep throws, which was no surprise as CSU’s secondary put up no resistance.  And while Ramsey is still feeling his way, it was encouraging to see that he’s learning how to put a touch on his throws.  The interception looked like it was the result of a miscommunication between him and Williams.
• I tell you, Jonathan Rumph is going to go down as one of the bigger mysteries of this program over the last five years.  He doesn’t play as much as we’d expect, but there are times when he’s in that he looks like a world beater.
• I wonder if the announcers made any comments about Chubb’s foot speed after he went untouched on that 83-yard jaunt.
• On defense, Pruitt elected to come out in that same base defense he sprung on Auburn, with Carter, Floyd and Jenkins all seeing the field together.  It worked well again, too.  The third stringers need to polish their containment skills, though.
• Special teams were marked by the second game this season without a Georgia punt.  Charleston Southern’s punter, though… I can’t figure out if he was merely bad, or just weird.  That being said, Georgia clearly couldn’t figure out what to do with him, so he was effective.  Kinda.
• Quayvon Hicks has polished his fair catch skills nicely.  And he may have shaken off the tackling attempts of every player on CSU’s defense on his way to the endzone on his touchdown run.
• Jack Loonam played, which was nice.  So did Kyle Karempelis, much to the pleasure of his cheering section.  And nobody was seriously hurt.

Now it’s on to Hate Week.